


Binary Application of Wax

by argentum_ls (LadySilver)



Category: Leverage
Genre: Chocolate Box Exchange 2020, Chocolate Box Treat, Established Relationship, Gift Fic, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 00:21:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28804227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySilver/pseuds/argentum_ls
Summary: If Eliot is going to teach Hardison how to fight, he has to do it Hardison's way.
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Eliot Spencer
Comments: 29
Kudos: 32
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	Binary Application of Wax

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BlueWolves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueWolves/gifts).



> Thanks, as always, to idelthoughts for the developmental support and beta work on this story.
> 
> Questions, comments, concrit, and kudos are all welcome.

Eliot _thought_ that Hardison renting out an entire martial arts studio meant he was going to take the whole “Gimme a few pointers, just a couple things I can do next time shit hits the fan, ya know?” request seriously.

He’d spent the week prior to their appointed day mentally combing through his own arsenal of attacks, parries, and blocks with an eye toward those that would be the easiest for a beginner to learn and for them to execute without endangering themselves further. It wasn’t just about technique, either; there was another issue too: Any idiot off the street could throw a punch. However, learning to throw one correctly required going through a period of helplessness in between the unlearning of the old and the re-learning of the new. The thought of Hardison being helpless, even if only for a few weeks, made Eliot sick. Hardison was already helpless enough with what little he did know.

Dressed in sweats and a t-shirt, he arrived at the studio with an inventory of moves he thought Hardison could handle. He’d narrowed the list further to moves he thought he could successfully teach. Aside from his one—mercifully brief—stint as a PE teacher, Eliot had never worked with a total novice before—certainly not one he cared about keeping alive. At least Hardison wasn’t a weakling, like the stereotypical computer nerd. Eliot had seen him shirtless enough to know that Hardison was physically fit. And all his gaming gave him excellent hand/eye coordination. The combination provided a solid foundation.

“What the hell is this?” Eliot demanded. The door swung shut behind him with a soft hiss like a warning. “What’s going on here?”

Green sheets hung from the ceiling, creating an enclosed space in the middle of the floor that had nothing but the mat and a station Hardison had set up for himself. The sheets hid all the dummies, strike pads, and training weapons that normally lined the walls of a studio, as if Hardison thought they wouldn’t have any use for them.

Hardison looked up from behind the rolling cart that held his laptop and no fewer than three different monitors and greeted Eliot with a salute. His black _Star Wars_ t-shirt stretched and relaxed across his chest with the movement. “Training,” he answered, as if Eliot had asked him to explain where to find the keyboard.

The hair on the back of Eliot’s neck raised; he took a careful step into the room, gaze sweeping the periphery for hidden surprises. Nothing stood out, though the more he looked around, the more he realized what the setup reminded him of. “This looks like a movie set,” he stated, voice pitching low. “A second rate movie set. You ain’t planning to film me and post it up on one of those FaceTube sites, are you?”

Hardison let out a loud squawk of indignation. “I would—I would _never_ ,” he protested. “Amount of time I spend crawling all over social media _removing_ stuff about us, and you think I’d just go a-and give away our secrets?” His voice rose on the stutter while his hands curled around the lip of the cart. “You got any idea what’s buried in the TOSes of those sites? Do you?” With a shake of his head, he issued his ruling. “And people say _we’re_ criminals.”

Eliot narrowed his eyes, well aware that Hardison’s level of dramatically expressed outrage directly correlated with his desire to throw people off the scent of what he was doing. He wasn’t falling for that. “Then you won’t mind so much if I just—” he reached for one of the sheets to pull it down, and stopped only because Hardison let out an even louder squawk. Turning, he nailed Hardison with a look that made seasoned hitmen quake in their boots.

One of these days, it would work.

Instead, Hardison pushed a smaller cart across the mat toward Eliot. It had a black, hardshell case on it that Eliot thought was part of Hardison’s setup until just this moment. “Put this on. Don’t forget the headband and gloves. Both of them.”

“Put what on?” Eliot didn’t move. The case was about the size of a large Duffel bag and had thick plastic latches keeping it closed. It didn’t look like a bomb, and Hardison hadn’t treated it like one either. That didn’t mean its contents were harmless.

“I took the liberty of adding a few extra sensors—additional data points provide more detail, you know—and recalibrating the sensitivities of the ones the suit came with—” Looking up from his screen, he noticed that Eliot wasn’t following directions. “Go,” he ordered. “Put it on. There’s a bathroom over that way.” He pointed toward one of the green sheets. “Time’s a-wastin’. Chop, chop.”

Hardison’s plan finally clicked into place. “Dammit, Hardison. When you asked me to teach you to fight, this is not what I had in mind,” Eliot groused. Kicking off his shoes, he bowed in proper respect at the edge of the mat, then stepped up to retrieve the case. It was heavier than it looked. Much heavier. That explained why Hardison had put it on wheels. He didn’t want to imagine how much its contents had cost, but he knew it would be a price that made regular people blanch.

“Play to your strengths, bruh. You know that. And this—” Hardison patted the top of the cart next to his laptop, making the metal ring. “—is my strength.”

In response, Eliot spread his feet and settled into a loose resting stance. The cuffs of his sweats brushed the tops of his feet, which had a greenish tinge from the light filtering through the sheets. He recognized both details, then categorized them as non-threats and ignored them, the way he’d been taught. “And this is mine. You wanna learn to fight, get out here and learn the old fashioned way. Some things don’t need any of that upgrading.”

Hardison rolled his lips and nodded his head slowly, as if giving Eliot’s position due consideration before dismissing it with a one shoulder shrug. “For how long?”

“What?”

“Well, you gonna teach me a few things today, and maybe they’ll click and maybe they won’t. Then we’ll do this again in a few weeks, and by then it’ll be pretty much starting from scratch. I may be a genius, but even I can’t learn good fighting technique in a couple hours. I ain’t The Cape, man.”

Eliot opened his mouth to ask who or what The Cape was, then decided he didn’t care. With a name like that, it had to be some kind of superhero reference. Besides, Hardison’s actual issue was what needed addressing. They were both busy guys, and living together sometimes only made it more difficult for them to coordinate schedules for activities such as this. Especially because Hardison’s sleep-wake schedule had no connection to a 24 hour clock. “Better than nothing,” he said.

“Ah! But not as good as what I’ve cooked up. A few hours of motion capture, and then I get to have your expert instruction no matter what time of day it is, or where in the world I am. Doesn’t matter if you’re sleeping or out beating people up.”

“That’s … not the worst idea you’ve ever had,” Eliot conceded. He still didn’t like it, and he wasn’t going to give on that. “I still think hand to hand combat should be taught hand to hand, though.”

“Duh. All this’ll do is make it so when we _can_ practice together, it’s a good use of our time.”

“Fine. Just make sure you keep it off the damn internet. Some of my moves are considered military secrets.”

Hardison cocked his head. “Which military?”

“That’s the secret part,” Eliot growled. He didn’t talk about his training, and Hardison usually knew better than to ask, even though Eliot knew he was burning with curiosity. In the same way, Eliot didn’t question Hardison about his skills, either how he learned them, or how he kept them in shape … not that he’d understand anyway, even when Hardison went on one of his rants where he tried to explain. “Honor among thieves” had a lot of layers, and only became more important when those thieves lived and slept together. “Swear it. You’ll keep any recordings for your personal and private use only. If any of my moves start showing up in kids’ karate tournaments, I’ll know who to blame.”

For all that Hardison didn’t like being ordered around—and he’d never met a boundary he didn’t want to test—he understood that some things needed to be off-limits. His recognition of when to respect those limits was one of the things that allowed them to work as a couple. He nodded solemnly. Then, as if figuring that Eliot wouldn’t be satisfied with that, crossed his heart. “I swear on my nana’s life.”

“OK,” Eliot answered with a reciprocating nod. As promises went, that was secure as it got. “Appreciated.” He waited a few seconds, shifting only enough to keep his bare feet from sticking to the floor mat. When it became clear that neither he nor Hardison had a follow-up comment, he snapped open the latches on the case and pulled out the motion capture suit it contained. It was much smaller than he expected and he lifted it with concern to size it against his body. While he wasn’t a large guy, he had enough mass and muscle to pose problems when shopping for street clothes. “This better not pinch anything important.”

“It’ll be as comfortable as a warm hug. Believe me.”

Eliot didn’t believe him, but he did trust that Hardison also wouldn’t want anything important pinched. With a final grumble to make it clear that he was, at best, a reluctant participant in this project, he went to change.

By the time he got back, Hardison had pushed the case back out of the way, clearing the floor, and was back to work typing into his laptop. The suit, meanwhile, was form-fitting, though not as tight as Eliot had feared it would be. He’d have preferred to work in street clothes—for the verisimilitude—or a proper _gi_ —for the respect of the art—but he could put up with skin-tight lycra. Except for the headband. 

The headband made him feel like a D-list action hero.

“One hour,” Eliot stated. “I’m only doing this for one hour, then we’re gonna do some training the right way.” He glanced around, looking for a clock so he could mark the start time, and noted again the green curtains. While they blocked anyone from outside looking in, they also looked precarious enough to fall if anyone hit the mat hard enough—which was inevitable. “Speaking of which: What’s up with those? They really necessary?”

Just as Eliot thought he might need to repeat the question because Hardison hadn’t heard him—or wasn’t paying attention—a grin broke across Hardison’s face. It was exactly the same kind of grin as when he’d successfully hacked into … something hard to hack into. If anything like that actually existed for Hardison. Grins like that always meant trouble.

“Oh, they’re necessary. Ab. So. Lutely. Necessary. I got plans,” Hardison answered. He tapped a few keys on the keyboard, squinted at the screen, tapped a few more keys, then looked straight at Eliot. “Personal and private plans,” he added. His eye twitched like he was trying hard not to wink. 

Breathing out a slow breath, Eliot centered himself and tried not to give Hardison the satisfaction of seeing him figure it out. He should’ve known, from the moment he saw the curtains, that Hardison hadn’t set this up just to learn how to fight. Eliot had sat through enough Behind the Scenes and Making Of documentaries to be aware that motion capture technology didn’t require green screens. They were only necessary for changing or controlling the background, which was obviously at least part of what Hardison intended to do. While Hardison’s inflection implied a pornographic goal, Eliot knew him better than that. With a groan of fond exasperation, Eliot asked, “Middle Earth, or Coruscant?”

For a second, Hardison gaped at him, any immediate rebuttal stolen because Eliot had managed to surprise _him_. “You—you said their names _right_ ,” Hardison managed, eyes wide. “You have been paying attention!”

With an upward tip of his chin, Eliot acknowledged that he knew exactly what he’d said, and what it meant. Then he settled into a looser stance and got ready to show Hardison a few more tricks. “Your turn, Grasshopper.”

**Author's Note:**

>  _The Cape_ was a short-lived TV show in which the eponymous character mastered martial arts in approximately two weeks of intensive training.


End file.
